All atwitter

Monday, March 23, 2009

In Russian, there's a proverb: "He who pays gets to request the music". Guess what, Google has the resources and the desire to tackle the complicated subject of book search, while providing authors with reasonable means of control over their content. Unquestionable fairness, on the other hand, is the lot of fairy-tale-tellers and governments (hypothetically), and results in 30-year-long projects to construct obsolete things poorly. If Microsoft or someone capable of launching a legal challenge is willing to do so with respect to above, let them, and I'm sure we all will benefit from discussion. Failing that (and I'm sure we'll see such challenges in the future anyway), let Google do its thing and for you (article author) it's time to go toss your Che t-shirt into laundry. And don't forget to opt-out of Google Content Registry.

Friends

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?" — was that it? — "I prefer men to cauliflowers" — was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished-how strange it was! — a few sayings like this about cabbages.